Tim O'Reilly writes about the reality that more and more of our lives — including whether you end up seeing this very sentence! — is in the hands of "black boxes": algorithmic decision-makers whose inner workings are a secret from the people they affect.

Jan Chipchase has assembled a provocative, imaginative, excellent list of "driver behaviors in a world of autonomous mobility" that go far beyond the lazy exercise of porting the "trolley problem" to self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles, including flying drones.

Boing Boing is proud to publish two original documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, in connection with "Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Extraordinary Rendition," a short story written for Laura Poitras's Astro Noise exhibition, which runs at NYC's Whitney Museum of American Art from Feb 5 to May 1, 2016.

The Ford Foundation's Michael Brennan discusses the many studies showing how algorithms can magnify bias — like the prevalence of police background check ads shown against searches for black names.

Santa Cruz, California police are testing prototype software that predicts where crimes may be committed in the next few days. The deputy chief of police thinks that it may help police patrol areas that aren't hotbeds of shady activity. Santa Clara University mathematician George Mohler developed the algorithm. — Read the rest